Jul 21, 2014 10:23 AM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Lack of sleep may hurt memory, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine found that people deprived of a night's sleep were more likely to flub the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images.

Researchers said distorted memory can have serious consequences in areas such as criminal justice, where eyewitness misidentifications are thought to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States.

"We found memory distortion is greater after sleep deprivation," Kimberly Fenn, co-investigator of the study and associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University, said in a statement. "And people are getting less sleep each night than they ever have."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls insufficient sleep an epidemic and said it's linked to vehicle crashes, industrial disasters and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

For the study, researchers conducted experiments at MSU and UC-Irvine to gauge the effect of insufficient sleep on memory.

Researchers found that participants who were kept awake for 24 hours - and even those who got five or fewer hours of sleep - were more likely to mix up event details than participants who were well rested.

"People who repeatedly get low amounts of sleep every night could be more prone in the long run to develop these forms of memory distortion," Fenn said. "It's not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk."

The findings were recently published online in the journal Psychological Science.

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit